We are deeply saddened by RTL’s decision to break up the G+J publishing house. Of a good 60 magazine titles, only 13 will remain. The rest will either be discontinued or sold. Hundreds of colleagues in editorial and administrative departments, with whom we as an agency have worked trustingly and committedly for years, will be shown the door. Along with them, probably just as many freelance authors, graphic designers, picture editors and photographers working for G+J face an extremely uncertain future.
This radical dismantling and the path leading to it are a particularly striking declaration of bankruptcy on the part of publishers. Ultimately, however, it is only a logical consequence of the ongoing economisation of the free press over many years. Driven by profit targets and the pressure to accumulate and concentrate, market-financed journalism is clearly no longer able to fulfil its role as the fourth estate.
The cost pressures imposed by the private media sector also create such precarious working conditions for text and photo journalists that high-quality work is practically impossible.
For this reason, the development of alternative financing models for the preservation and further development of journalistic offerings that are oriented towards the common good is becoming increasingly important for society.
With the founding of the ‘laif Genossenschaft e.G.’ cooperative last year, laif photographers and many supporters from civil society have already taken the first step in this direction.
This is now being followed by plans for a sustainable corporate structure with a broader purpose: the collaborative redesign and promotion of independent photojournalism and high-quality photography – as a cornerstone of diversity of opinion and press freedom.
For us as the laif cooperative, which represents almost 400 photographers worldwide through the agency, (photo)journalism is too important for society and democracy to be left to the self-regulating mechanisms of the market.
Christoph Bangert | Andreas Herzau | Manfred Linke
(Members of the Executive Board of the ‘laif Cooperative’)
